Chapter 1
Nothing under the sun scared Roses Sun . . . but when she woke up to the silence that Sunday two weeks before the Lunar New
Year, Roses was terrified.
Her entire life, the formidable matriarch of the Sun Clan of Greater Los Angeles had been as unflappable as a stone obelisk.
This stony countenance was a necessity for her notorious family, consisting of a golden menagerie of people that were vastly
different in appearance and personality, yet united with one shared trait: an inclination toward messiness. The eldest and
hence leader of this prominent clan, it was up to Roses to be their bastion of fortitude and calm, but these were ends that
often required merciless means.
Yet as spring approached, Lunar New Year loomed. This meant that Roses’s zodiac year would soon be upon her, and this reset
of her astrological cycle had her uncharacteristically rattled.
Every dozen years starting from birth, each person enters their zodiac year, whether they know it or not.
But it is better to know it, because the return of one’s own animal in this celestial wheel—from Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, to Pig—marks a transformative year in which that person will be tried and tested by fate.
No, the return of one’s zodiac year is not cause for celebration, but is rather a period of consternation, inviting all sorts of energetic tumult and ghostly tomfoolery.
No one knew this better than the supremely superstitious Roses Sun. Even before the New Year, already she had begun to paint
every manicured nail on her fingers and toes an imposing deep scarlet to ward away evil, ensuring that there was lucky red
protection on her body at all times, even when she was naked in the shower.
Roses sat up in her California king bed, listening in alarm to the silence around her. In the dimness of her bedroom, she
could see the outline of her husband, Teddy, curled up on the other end of their massive mattress. Unlike her first two husbands,
Teddy the Third did not snore, but he was a night roller and often ended up on far-flung corners of their marital bed.
Roses crawled the long way over to Teddy and stirred him awake with the delicate touch of a fracking drill. “Teddy! Wake up!”
With a snort the elderly man stirred awake, holding a hand up in surrender like he did first thing every morning. He smacked
his chapped lips, yawning as he felt for his glasses on the nightstand. “Morning, Rosie.”
Roses was already across the room pulling open their curtains, exposing their floor-to-ceiling window’s grand view of the
Pacific Ocean shimmering at them in the early light. From his usual sleeping place at the foot of the bed, her old pit bull
Houyi yawned awake, stretching luxuriously.
“This is the fourth day in a row, Teddy,” Roses said, shaking her head gravely. “The fourth day in a row where I haven’t heard
the crying.”
Slowly, Teddy sat up on the bed, stretching out his stiff shoulders.
Theodore “Teddy” Grinspan was the semiretired restaurateur of a classic Los Angeles delicatessen chain who was locally famous for selling fifty million rugelach over the span of his career.
A gentle soul who was as sweet and self-indulgent as his pastries, he had started Ozempic at his wife’s mandatory suggestion a couple years prior and had subsequently lost nearly a hundred pounds.
But still he moved laboriously and breathily, like the much bigger man he once was.
Teddy scratched his liver-spotted head. “You know, Rosie, most people would be relieved to not be hearing voices anymore.”
He winced preemptively at his poor choice of words. Sure enough, as Roses strode by him into her bathroom, she rapped on his
bald spot with irritated knuckles.
Sitting down at her vanity, Roses peered into the mirror and combed her voluminously long hair, naturally shiny black without
a hint of gray. At fifty-nine years old, she looked easily two decades younger, aided by genetics, the occasional needling
and a lifelong vampiric attitude toward UV rays. Roses’s favorite nephew, Wayward, often remarked that she resembled an “Asian
Joan Crawford,” dramatic eyebrows and all. A tiny-boned woman who stood no taller than five foot one, Roses was a champion
dog breeder of prized albino pit bulls that kept their entire Malibu neighborhood free of those pesky coyotes.
Very few people had ever been allowed into the palatial marble cave that was Roses’s personal bathroom, though her nonfavorite
nephew, Sunbern, had once wandered in stoned and searching for wet wipes. Sunbern had been surprised instead to come upon
the solitary photograph of Roses and her two younger sisters, Sunbern’s and Wayward’s mothers, atop her dresser. He had been
surprised because the three Sun sisters’ relationships were, to say the least, complicated.
Hearing her husband start the shower in his own bathroom, Roses reached for the long crucifix chain that had belonged to her
father, draped over the photo frame of her and her sisters. She reflexively rolled the body of the Christ between her thumb
and finger a few good times, then looped the necklace around her neck. She then pulled her Sunfang phone out of her vanity
drawer and dialed a number.
A live feed of house slippers housing furry toes suddenly popped up on her screen. Roses frowned and looked away. Despite her calling him nearly every morning, Master Chu rarely pointed his camera in the right direction.
Good day, Master Chu, she said in half-decent Cantonese.
A good day perhaps, Mrs. Sun, a crooning male voice replied cryptically, sounding worn as an old record. But I have tossed the coins and the divination is clear: Our good days may be numbered.
In the bloodwood-accented kitchen two floors down from Roses and Teddy’s bedroom, April Sun stared toward the eggs but not
at them, as evidenced by the furious crackling of the blackening whites as she fried everyone’s breakfast into rubber. Her
brooding mind wasn’t on the eggs, at least not these ones. April’s mind was rarely on whatever was immediately in front of
her.
As the eggs sputtered and smoked, the fire alarm on the other end of the kitchen began to blare, finally snapping April out
of her contemplations. Sighing an already defeated sigh, she picked up the frying pan and dumped its smoldering contents into
the sink.
Her husband, Cristiano, appeared, striding quickly into the kitchen. With the smooth muscle memory of someone who dealt with
this often, Cristiano calmly reached up and pressed his thumb down on the alarm. The wailing mercifully stopped.
Cristiano Baccay had been the tallest Asian at their high school, and ended up playing college basketball on the national
level, though he had been more celebrated for his movie-star looks than his athletic prowess. These days his height advantage
was mostly used for changing light bulbs, playing airplane with their daughter, Meadow, or picking the fattest guavas for
his mother-in-law, Roses, from the trees in her sprawling backyard orchard.
“Goddammit!” April cursed. “Sorry about that. Bit slow today.” A molten drop of grease splashed onto April’s wrist as she dropped the pan back onto the stove with a clatter.
She yelped and brushed her fingers at the offending spot, only to feel Cristiano swoop behind her to steady her.
His big hands cradled nearly the entire length of her forearm.
“Hey, hey. Easy there, Ape.” He chuckled and it calmed her instantly. Somehow her husband always managed to smell good. He
kissed her on her temple and took a big breath in, inhaling her morning scent as well.
Playfully she swatted him away. “That cute thing you do doesn’t work before coffee. Besides, I fucked up the eggs and I haven’t
even started Meadow’s lunch yet.”
Cristiano was already opening the fridge. “Packed it last night.” He pulled out Meadow’s metallic Chang’E lunch box, flashing
a heroic smile. “And don’t worry about breakfast. I’ll just whip up some oatmeal—it’ll be good for Teddy.”
April laughed and shook her head, wondering what she would do without her steadfast husband of eight years. Poised and pretty
with a pixie cut, the gamine April did not inherit her mother Roses’s conspicuous beauty. She did, however, stand a good head
taller. At thirty-four, it was still the only thing April ever had over her mother.
She returned his smile with a shy, wry one of her own. “Okay, Cris, the cute thing is working now.”
Cristiano reached out and pulled his wife to him. The refrigerator was still open and was letting out blasts of chilled air,
but somehow April still felt a warm tremor deep within her as he wrapped his strong arms around her body. Cristiano leaned
down and she tilted her face to meet his soft lips.
He finally withdrew, grinning. “Cris 1, Coffee 0.”
Lest she risk another dad joke, April pulled him back to her, this time with her lips apart. She deepened the kiss this time,
and felt a faithful thickening underneath his gray sweatpants.
Dependably on cue, seven-year-old Meadow Sun charged into the kitchen, chased by a trio of pit bull puppies, all four of them yipping and yapping.
April and Cristiano quickly broke apart as April joined the chase after their daughter, though less enthused about it.
Cristiano subtly crossed his legs as he began to rummage through the cabinets for oats.
“Meadow, what have we said about running in the kitchen?” April scolded as she scooped up two growling puppies, avoiding the teething third, who was a biter. “And who said you could
let the dogs inside?”
“Nainai always lets them inside too!” Meadow pouted, referring to her grandmother Roses. She was clearly on track to be as
tall as her parents, and was at the age where she ate mostly candy but was still somehow wiry thin.
“Nainai isn’t the one who has to clean up all their runny shit,” April muttered to herself as she walked out of the kitchen